I know which movie will win next year’s best picture Oscar

Can you scientifically determine the winner of the Best Picture Oscar? Probably not, but let’s try anyway. Come February, we’ll know how well this all works out for Movie Year 2014. (Of course, the nominations come out in January so if the answer we reach isn’t among those five to ten films getting the nod ….)

We’re not exactly using Moneyball*-style sabermetrics here, but I’ve decided on three criteria for our experiment: number of words in the title; month of release; and whether the screenplay is adapted or original.

Number of Words in the Title

Three-word title movies have claimed the most Best Picture prizes: 24, with three in the past 10 years (Million Dollar Baby, The Hurt Locker and The King’s Speech). Taking second place was one-word titles with 22, including last year’s Argo. (We’re counting the hyphenated Ben-Hur as one.)

The full list of three-worders is: The Broadway Melody, The Great Ziegfeld, Going My Way, The Lost Weekend, All About Eve, On the Waterfront, West Side Story, Lawrence of Arabia, My Fair Lady, The French Connection, The Deer Hunter, Kramer vs. Kramer, Chariots of Fire, Terms of Endearment, Out of Africa, The Last Emperor, Driving Miss Daisy, Dances with Wolves, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, A Beautiful Mind, Million Dollar Baby, The Hurt Locker and The King’s Speech.

Month of Release

No surprise here, but November and December claim the lion’s share of best picture winners: 18 and 17 respectively. That might seem like a recent phenomenon, backloading the movie calendar to release potential award winners closer to the end of the year to ensure maximum familiarity in the voters’ minds, but only four of the last 10 winners were released in the November-December glut.

What’s more, October, April, September, May and August can all lay claim to multiple winners throughout the years, with February, March and June farther behind. Bringing up the rear are January with only one, The Greatest Show on Earth back in 1952, and July, giving the work On the Waterfront (1954) and Forrest Gump (1994).

Mind you, a little fudging might have gone on here; many of these year-end films were limited releases in November and December, not breaking wide until December or January of the next calendar year.

Adaptation or Original

This might be the most telling factor. A whopping 60 best picture winners are adapted from books, plays, short stories, previous films or the like. That would include this year’s winner for best picture of 2013, 12 Years a Slave. It was the second adapted screenplay in a row to lead to the big win after Argo, but that followed a three-year streak of “original ideas” – The Artist, The King’s Speech and The Hurt Locker.

Conclusion

Taking all this into consideration, we can conclude that the odds are very much in the favor of two particular 2014 films: Into the Woods and Unbroken.

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Into the Woods, the long-awaited version of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine‘s Tony-winning Broadway musical of 1987. It’s got a three-word title, it’s due out on Christmas Day, and it’s an adaptation of a stage production …… which was itself a reworking of classic fairy tales.

Unbroken, Angelina Jolie‘s sophomore directing effort, the true-life tale of Louis Zamperini, World War II soldier and Olympic athlete. It’s a single-word title, it’s also released on Dec. 25, and it’s based on the bestselling book by Lauren Hillenbrand, the author of “Seabiscuit.”

Let’s look at the pros and cons for both.

Into the Woods

Pros: The original source material is critically acclaimed and beloved. Contrary to popular belief, musicals – while not as big as in Hollywood’s heyday – are not a deal breaker when it comes to Oscar. Eight straight-up musicals have won best picture (and that’s not counting others with a heavy musical bent), the last being 2002’s Chicago, which, oh hey, was directed by Into the Woodsdirector Rob Marshall, himself a nominee that year. And did we mention the cast? Oscar nominees Anna Kendrick and Johnny Depp, as well as Tracey Ullman, Chris Pine, Emily Blunt, Christine Baranski and, multi-Oscar winner Meryl Streep, who didn’t do too badly for herself last year starring in a movie version of an award-winning play.

Cons: It’s taken 27 years to make it to the big screen. Fantasy, of which this story has elements, is never a favorite among Oscar voters. And while August: Osage County scored multiple nods this year, including one for Streep, it was not anywhere near universally loved.

Unbroken

Pros: It’s a war drama. Nearly 20 best picture winners have wars of some sort featured predominately. It’s a survival story, both adrift at sea in a raft and as a P.O.W. That’s Oscar catnip right there. The screenplay is by Joel and Ethan Coen, need I say more. The 2010 nonfiction book it’s derived from was a multiple award-winner. Jolie is Oscar royalty – her father’s a winner, her “husband” got his first this year as a producer of 12 Years a Slave, and at the ceremony she added to her supporting actress win for Girl, Interrupted with the honorary Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Zamperini is still alive at the age of 97; it’s still a year away, but his presence at the awards ceremony would be irresistible.

Cons: Like it or not, only one movie directed by a woman has won best picture, Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker. (Although this year’s co-directing win in the best animated feature category for Jennifer Lee is a good sign.) Having the living, breathing inspiration for a film in attendance didn’t help the makers of Philomena and Captain Phillips; both movies went home empty-handed from this year’s ceremony despite three nominations a piece. Stars like Jack O’Connell, Garrett Hedlund, Jai Courtney and Domhnall Gleeson are not exactly household names.

Do you agree? Are these the best bets for Oscar gold?

* Moneyballwas, itself, a nominee for best picture at the 2012 Oscar ceremony, but lost that contest as well as five others. What went wrong? It was a one-word title. Check. It was adapted from a book. Check. It came out in September. Oops.

CJ Lais

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